Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) faced a data breach on May 20, 2024, the government has confirmed. Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), has reported possible intrusion and data breach at BSNL, Minister of State for Communications Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani said on Wednesday in a written response to a Lok Sabha. However, the data breach didn't lead to any service outage.
According to a report by TheHindu, Pemmasani has confirmed that the government is forming an inter-ministerial committee to conduct an audit of the telecom networks. The committee will also suggest remedial measures to ensure such data breaches do not take place in the future. Athenian Tech, in June, had said that this breach involved crucial data of the customers such as International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) numbers, SIM card information, Home Location Register (HLR) details, and more.
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The report mentioned that this data was enough for the hackers to clone the SIM cards of subscribers. The security infrastructure of BSNL needs more work or else the data of the customers will always be prone to being hacked and sold in the black market. The government is currently pushing BSNL to launch 4G networks throughout the country so that it can compete with the private telcos.
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However, at the same time, work on making the networks more secure has to happen. Private telecom operators invest a lot of money in securing their networks and overall infrastructure to avoid any such incidents. This will be one more reason for customers to opt for the services of private telecom operators. As the world moves towards a digital future, how secure a network is will become one of the major factors for customers in choosing their telecom operators.
